A Great Musical for the '90s

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

FALSETTOLAND Music and Lyrics by William Finn; Book by William Finn and James Lapine

A plump Jewish matron sits in the stands watching her son play baseball, then looks over in consternation at a new arrival in the crowd and croons to herself, "Just what I wanted at a Little League game -- my ex-husband's ex- lover. Isn't that what every mother dreams of?" In that moment, actually among the funniest and happiest of an off-Broadway musical set in the early months of the AIDS epidemic, Falsettoland expresses its edgy wit, cockeyed charm and matter-of-fact acceptance of a world Norman Rockwell never painted.

Handsome men in sports clothes and sweatbands play racquetball, snorting like stags in battle, then sing love songs to each other. A female doctor and her lover, a would-be inventor of nouvelle kosher cuisine, cheerily introduce themselves as "the lesbians from next door." The matron's husband, and surrogate father to her son, is the ex-husband's ex-psychiatrist. The shrink and the boy do a vaudeville-inspired soft-shoe number called Everyone Hates His Parents. The mother probably speaks for a whole generation or two when she describes her occupation in life as "holding to the ground as the ground keeps shifting."

Yet if Falsettoland depicts a special world, it does not require a special audience. Doubtless many gays attend, as actor Lonny Price puckishly implies during the prologue by pointing flashlights into the house as he sings the word homosexuals. But a once exotic Manhattan world has become familiar, and its emotional issues concern everyone. The prevalence of divorce has imposed a less prescriptive definition of family. AIDS has settled into the landscape as yet another way to lose a loved one too soon. As the show tenderly depicts, life's joys tend to be small and quiet and its sorrows abrupt and huge, whatever your religion, ethnicity or sexual preference. This is above all a musical about the most universal concept, home, and the buffeting ways the world intrudes upon it.

Every bit as remarkable as the largeness of vision is the intimacy of scale with which director and co-author James Lapine has staged it. Lapine, who collaborated with composer Stephen Sondheim on the intricate musicals Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, here limits himself to a few chairs, a doorway, two beds, a white curtain and a handful of props. The result is as magical as the computer-generated wizardry of a Les Miserables or Phantom of the Opera. The action shifts fluidly from reality to fantasy, from confessional thought to naturalistic dialogue, from poignance to farce.

The cast is admirable, notably Faith Prince as the abandoned wife, Michael Rupert as her ex-husband, Stephen Bogardus as the man he left her for, and Price as the psychiatrist. The fulcrum of the ensemble is the child of the broken marriage, on the eve of his Bar Mitzvah, played with just the right blend of anxiety and healing gumption by Danny Gerard, 13. Each actor gets at least one beautiful, revealing song, and all of them make William Finn's music haunting. This individual excellence adds up to general excellence: for craft and for heart, Falsettoland is the first great musical of the '90s, and will probably loom just as large when the decade is over. It is a burst of genius.